Re: [Usability] User Shut Down damaged PC

[Hans Petter Jansson <hpj novell com>]

On Wed, 2007-03-28 at 08:50 -0700, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On 3/28/07, Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:

> I agree that the shutdown option should not be removed from GDM. While
> it's possible to shut a machine down from a remote machine using ssh,
> which I do here once in awhile, it doesn't work for single computer
> households or when users don't know to ask someone to do this for
> them. It's not even friendly to remove shutdown from GDM. What if I'm
> not home to do it? That just doesn't work.
> 
> Assuming we have removed shutdown from the desktop environment then
> the two ideas that do work in my mind are:
> 
> 1) At least warn users requesting shutdown from GDM that other users
> are logged on. I think most reasonable people would then walk around
> the house or small office to find out who they are and ask if it's OK
> to shutdown. It's not hard to learn to use the 'users' command and go
> ask if it's OK with them to shutdown.
> 
> 2) Make the actual shutdown operation password protected. I'd prefer
> to have a 'shutdown' group so that no one needs the root password but
> at least my wife and I could prohibit (but not stop) my son from
> rebooting.

The following bug has some information in it that may be useful to you:

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=372738

I really need to get my head back into it and follow up on it... The
bottom line is that newer versions of GDM can restrict shutdown
privileges. I believe my patch also restricts the logout dialog, but
it's not a good solution, as Brian points out in a comment.

Maybe you can even flesh out the bug a bit with your requirements, so it
will be taken into consideration when it's revisited, eventually.

-- 
Hans Petter